Libyan rebels push back
They were aided by NATO strikes taking out 25 tanks. Shelling of Ajdabiya stopped.
By Sebastian Abbot and Hadeel al-Shalchi
Associated Press
AJDABIYA, Libya - NATO air strikes battered Moammar Gadhafi's tanks Sunday, helping Libyan opposition forces push back government troops that had advanced toward the opposition's eastern stronghold.
The fighting came as an African Union team arrived to press for a cease-fire.
PIER PAOLO CITO / AP
Moammar Gadhafi has had ties to the African Union, which seeks a cease-fire.
A rebel battlefield commander said four air strikes Sunday largely stopped heavy shelling by government forces of the rebel-held city of Ajdabiya - a critical gateway to the opposition's de facto capital of Benghazi in the east.
NATO's leader of the operation said the air strikes destroyed 11 tanks near Ajdabiya and 14 near Misrata, the only city rebels still hold in the western half of Libya.
The fighting in Ajdabiya on Sunday killed 23 people, 20 of them Gadhafi troops, said Mohammed Idris, supervisor of a hospital in the city.
The main front line in Libya's uprising runs along a 600-mile coastal highway from Benghazi, Libya's second-largest city, to Tripoli, the capital, where Gadhafi's power is concentrated.
Over the last few days, Gadhafi's forces have been knocking the rebels back eastward in their most sustained offensive since international air strikes drove the forces back last month. If they had taken Ajdabiya, the Gadhafi forces would have had a clear path to Benghazi, about 100 miles away along the coast.
"If he controls Ajdabiya, he makes us feel like we are unsafe because he can move anywhere in the east," said Col. Hamid Hassy, a rebel battlefield commander.
Coalition air strikes, initially conducted under U.S. leadership, began March 19 to repel Gadhafi's forces, who were then at the doorstep of Benghazi.
Hassy said Gadhafi's forces fled the western gates of Ajdabiya and by midafternoon had been pushed back about 40 miles west of the city. However, sporadic shelling could still be heard around western Ajdabiya.
Rebels had been growing critical of NATO, which accidentally hit opposition fighters in deadly air strikes twice this month. They have complained that the alliance was too slow and imprecise, but Hassy, the rebel commander, said it was getting better.
"To tell you the truth, at first NATO was paralyzed, but now they have better movement and are improving," he said.
NATO noted that it was enforcing the no-fly zone on both sides, having intercepted a rebel MiG-23 fighter jet that it forced back to the airport Saturday.
In a new diplomatic push to halt the fighting that began in February, South African President Jacob Zuma and the heads of Mali and Mauritania arrived in Tripoli to try to broker a cease-fire.
Afterward, Zuma said Gadhafi had accepted the group's "road map" calling for an immediate cease-fire along with the opening of channels of humanitarian aid, and talks between the rebels and the government.
Zuma and the others planned to press their efforts with the rebels in a meeting on Monday.
But Libya's leader of more than 40 years has ignored a cease-fire he announced after Western air strikes were authorized last month, and the rebels are insisting that Gadhafi leave power as part of any deal.
Also, Gadhafi enjoys substantial support from countries of the African Union, an organization that he chaired two years ago and helped transform using Libya's oil wealth. So it is not clear whether rebels would accept the union as a fair broker.
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Saudis Back Yemen Initiative
A bloc of oil-rich Arab nations along the Persian Gulf, including Saudi Arabia, called on Yemen's longtime president Sunday to give up power as part of a deal with protesters demanding his ouster, a diplomat in the region said.
Keeping up the pressure, tens of thousands marched in the capital, San'a, Sunday, a day after clashes between demonstrators and security forces there. There was no violence on Sunday.
The statement, by foreign ministers of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council meeting in the Saudi capital, was effectively a call for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down. The bloc repeated an offer to mediate between Saleh and his opponents, said the diplomat, who requested anonymity. The plan would have Saleh resign in exchange for immunity from prosecution.
Saleh, a key U.S. ally in the war against al-Qaeda, last week rejected a similar mediation offer by the council.
- Associated Press
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